Disaster relief bills usually fly through Congress like legislative comets. But not the $60 billion package for Superstorm Sandy, most of which is still crawling along more than two months after the storm hit.

This sluggishness has triggered howls of outrage and charges of backstabbing from the New York and New Jersey delegations. Truth be told, though, the bill is generous to fault, rushing spending that in many cases needs much closer scrutiny.

Even in Washington, $60 billion is a lot of money. In fact, it's almost exactly how much the government will collect this year by raising taxes on the wealthy as part of the much ballyhooed "fiscal cliff" deal. So, before the House votes Tuesday, the Sandy package needs to be put on a diet.

This doesn't mean withholding desperately needed aid for the businesses and families whose lives were upended when the storm devastated the Northeast in late October. They're entitled to have claims on their federal flood insurance policies paid promptly, something Congress ensured when it passed a $9.7 billion piece of the larger bill last week. And many of the storm victims are deserving of federal grants, which the relief measure would provide.

These insurance payments and grants account for roughly half of the $60 billion. It's the other half that needs a trim.

Start with items that have nothing to do with Sandy, such as spending for a fisheries emergency in Alaska or Colorado wildfire damage. These items are a small piece of the bill, and at least they respond to officially designated emergencies. But lawmakers are simply getting relief for their states by hitching their projects to the only emergency measure likely to clear Congress anytime soon.

And that gets at the real reason why the Sandy bill needs to be slimmed down. Designating spending as an "emergency" exempts it from the budget caps Congress enacted in 2011 to control spending.

The Sandy measure contains substantial spending to replace government assets damaged or destroyed by the storm. Especially in an entity as large as the federal government, it's hard to believe that officials couldn't find vehicles from elsewhere to replace those destroyed, or reprogram existing money to fix damaged buildings.

The spending least worthy of an emergency loophole is the billions the bill demands for projects to protect against damage from future storms. Most or all of this spending makes sense. Protecting subway tunnels from flooding could save millions in the next storm, for example, and coastal communities behind sand barriers weathered the storm much better than those that elected not to build them.

Working-class towns might not be able to afford the tens of millions it costs to build sand barriers, but New York and New Jersey, for all their own budget woes, are relatively well-off states. It's a matter of priorities.

And, as we've argued previously, it's time to reform the chronically underfinanced federal flood insurance program so taxpayers in Nebraska don't end up repeatedly subsidizing beach homes. It encourages repeated rebuilding in flood-prone areas.

Rushing Sandy relief through Congress might be politically convenient, and scrubbing the numbers might seem heartless. But when Washington is spending $1 trillion more than it's taking in each year, even disaster relief merits scrutiny.